Luang prabang to Vang Vieng Day 23

Hi all,
Sorry for the delay in the posts. Promise we have been making daily summaries we have just had little internet access and time to type the posts out!!

So the only way to get from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng is driving, either by mini bus or a normal bus.
We decided to go with the mini bus thinking that it would be more comfortable and the fact that its quicker...After our journey I'm not so sure it was the best decision.

The road from LP to VV is only about 120km but it took us 6 hours to get there!! The road is through the mountains and very very winding. It makes Bainskloof pass look like a walk in the park. I had read that it was pretty tough going, and for the first 2 hours or so I couldn't understand what people were on about...and then we go into the next half. Seriously bad. And to make it worse the driver would only put the aircon on when going downhill, I think the car was loaded too full to make it up with the aircon on too. It is beautiful though and the scenery does go some ways in making up for the drive.

I was feeling pretty rough at the end of it, and very glad once we got to Vang Vieng. Although we heard from another guy in our bus that the journey from Hanoi to LP is the journey from hell. It takes 26hours and is just as winding, I am very glad we decided to fly. Although according to him the bus journey from hell makes for a good facebook post, so maybe we missed out. Sorry guys that our comfort came before your reading pleasure :)

Once we got to VV we walked around trying to find somewhere to stay. We hadn't really done that much research other than Jeremy doing some reading on the way there (his car sickness is a lot better than mine!) so we headed down to the river to see what we could find.

We ended up at TCK Guesthouse, which boasted river views and only cost us around 10 pounds. It was quite a nice spot and brand new. The rooms were quite funny though as they had been finished off really badly. For example the paint jobs on the walls stopped about 10cm from the skirting boards and the ceilings had circles drawn on them for the downlighters, but whoever installed those used the guides very roughly as you can see the circles quite clearly with the light installed right next to it. LOL. But the place was big and clean and the view was pretty amazing.

For those of you that don't know what Vang Vieng is, its basically a sleepy town on the road between LP and the capital of Laos, Vientiane. This town has now been transformed into the party town of SE Asia and has quite a reputation. You basically hire tubes,go down the river and stop at numerous bars on the way down to drink. Water, tubes and drunk people makes for a pretty awesome party experience!! After you get sick of the tubing all the bars in the town serve western food and most of them have daybeds and endless re runs of friends or family guy playing.

After we checked in we went into town for some food and killed a couple of hours watching friends. Doesn't matter how many times you have seen friends it is still great, and even more so after a few weeks of BBC News and if you are lucky a decent movie on HBO (that you will inevitably only catch the last 30mins of).

We ended up at bucket bar after that. And the name really says it all. Jeremy and I ordered a lao lao bucket and I will say that it went down really slowly.No amount of ice could make it taste better. We decided that we would stick to vodka buckets from now on. Anyways we spent some time laughing at the drunken tubers, knowing that it would probably be us tomorrow...And had a relatively quiet night knowing that we would need it the next day.

Will leave you now with some pics, Jeremy will take over for the actual tubing day.




View on journey from LP to VV




Vang Vieng




Watching Friends :)

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Luang Prabang - day with the giants Day 22

Candice and I had originally planned to go the elephant village on the Thursday but after my stomach bug we decided to shift it to the Friday to give a little extra time to recover.
They picked up us early at our hotel on Friday at about 7:30am. Fortunately for us there was only 5 people booked on the day trip which made the group really small. It was three Americans Megan, Ethan and Rachel. Interestingly Ethan and Megan were also newly weds and having that in common made for some interesting conversation. It's interesting to hear other peoples stories and their reasons for travelling what they do for a living etc. I had a really interesting chat with Nathan who was a lawyer for the American army and gets deployed to various bases around the world. His next deployment is in a small village in Germany. He defends American soldiers for any wrongdoing or against war crimes they accused of. We chatted a lot about wars and the military etc. One thing I found really interesting though is that the US army is deployed all over the world, war or no war. If you are a US citizen the US army can reach you anywhere in the world in 40 minutes.

The elephant village while being a major tourist attraction is good in that they capture elephants from logging where they are exploited. Instead of working 16 hours a day logging in the forrest they work a maximum of 4 hours a day and are well looked after.
Our guide for the day was a laos man who's English was slightly broken but we could just about understand him. Happy and friendly as ever he tells us we are going to learn basic commands in Laos to talk to the elephants.
The elephants are very well trained and you learn pretty quick that they are intelligent creatures. After he takes us through the basic commands we walk over to a mahout who is sitting on an elephant. A mahout is someone who basically lives with an elephant as his job to train them. Out of nowhere the guide says to me you first time to ride elephant. I can't remember the command but he talks to the elephant and it bends it's right front leg so that I can stand on its leg and climb into it. Before I know it I am sitting on top of this massive creature and and it starts to walk. A little nerve wracking at first but you feel pretty safe. We each take our turn one by one and then after that we did what most tourists do and go for a hour long walk whilst sitting on the elephant.

After that was a buffet lunch where we had a good chat with the three Americans who were on the tour with us. Megan we learn is a English teacher in South Korea but is heading back to the states to study. South Korea sounded like an interesting place maybe one day we could visit there.

After lunch we did what for me was a truly unforgettable experience. We each got an elephant with a mahout and went down to the river. We waded into the river with the elephants and are given a brush to scrub the elephants and splash water on them. The elephant I was on was extremely playful. As I brushed it and poured water over its back it would take water with its trunk and spray it back at me. I jumped off the elephant to swim in the river as it was about 36 degrees. As I was in the river looking across in the river watching everyone swim among the elephants and playing with them was very surreal something I won't forget for a long time. We were in the water for about 20-30 mins with the elephants after which we got on a boat to take us up river to a waterfall. The waterfall was dry as its the dry season. The reason they take you there is that their is that there is a zip line in the forrest that you can do as another activity. We then went back down the river to the elephant village where we could swim in the pool and have a drink and just relax. The pool was quite nice it had a concrete chairs in it and a bar you could sit at and have drinks. We swam and relaxed for about an hour before heading back to Luang Prabang town center. When we got back we went for an early dinner with the Americans at a little coffee shop/restaurant called JO MA which was all to easy to pronounce as jou ma.

Being our last evening in Luang Prabang we decided to walk up the hill which has a viewpoint over the town. We did it at sunset and it was pretty scenic. After that we went back to our room and got ready so we could go out. We had a couple drinks at a place called Lao Lao Bar which is name after the famous Lao Lao whisky. We were there till about 11:00 before we decided to hit the infamous bowling alley in Luang Prabang. In Luang Prabang everything closes down at 11:30pm so everyone at the bars/pubs either heads off home or two the bowling alley as it is the only place open for a drink after 11:30pm. Quite a random thing a bowling alley in a place like Luang Prabang but great fun at the same time. Candice and I played three games of bowling and it ended up in a tie.I won the first game, Candice won the second game and the third game was tied. We were only their for about an hour in all as we had to go home and pack as we were leaving early the next day for Vang Vieng.



Look ma no hands.




My beautiful wifey.



Two saffas and three Americans.



FTeeeessssss (f..king tourists)






swimming with the elephants.



View from the hill.



At the bowling alley.



I won I won.